Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — There was one from Joe Lambert of Germantown, Tennesse. One from James Banks of Memphis. One from Mason Bowe of Bartlett. And on and on it went.
Last Wednesday, after the news broke that Mike Conley Jr. had been traded to the Utah Jazz, emails from Memphis Grizzlies fans started to come into the KSL.com Sports inbox. They weren’t emails filled with angry messages — just the opposite, in fact. In all, more than a dozen fans wrote in to share just how special Conley is.
“You guys just got a real winner,” Lambert wrote. “A true professional. Mike is a great player and person. I hope you get a title with him. He deserves it.”
“Hopefully he leaves the same impact on Utah as he did on Memphis,” Banks wrote. “He’ll never be forgotten here.”
“A community couldn’t ask for a better player,” Bowe wrote. “He genuinely cared about Memphis and all the fans here. I really hope he wins a title in Utah.”
On Monday night, Conley was at the NBA Awards Show in Santa Monica, California. He was up for three awards — the teammate of the year award, the sportsmanship award and the community assist award. He won two.
That speaks to who the Jazz’s newest point guard is as a person. He also happens to be a pretty good player, too.
Conley saw the headlines and the talk on social media after the trade. He heard the narrative: With him, the Jazz are now a Western Conference contender.
“I feel like they are already there, I’m just trying to blend in,” Conley said to NBA TV in the lead up to Monday’s award show. “It’s an honor and humbling that people feel that way about me. I’m just going to try and bring what I can to the team and give ourselves that chance.”
The work to fit in has already begun.
Monday afternoon, Conley posted numerous shots of him and Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell working out together on Instagram. Mitchell was wearing a typical Spida-branded shooting shirt. Conley? He was wearing a Utah Jazz shirt.
The fact that Conley will be wearing a new jersey this year didn’t come as a surprise to, well, anyone — least of all to him.
Memphis, where he spent the first 12 years of his career, is setting the reset button. In February, the Grizzlies traded longtime center Marc Gasol to Toronto, where he won the NBA Finals, and then sent Conley to Utah, where he’s hoping to do the same thing.
The night before the trade broke, Conley was told by the Grizzlies that the Jazz were getting aggressive in their pursuit and that he should expect something within the next couple of days. He just didn’t think it would come the next day.
“I was actually traveling to my mom’s house in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and got off the plane and found out I had got traded,” Conley said on NBA TV. “It just happened so quick. You kind of expected it but once it happens, all the emotions and feelings come in.”
The emotions of leaving the city that has become his home and leaving the only professional team he has ever suited up for.
“You try to prepare yourself for that moment, but you don’t really know how you are going to react to it,” Conley said at his press conference at the NBA Awards Show. “Once it happens, you just reflect on the memories.”
But once some time went by — about a half hour, maybe a little longer — things began to settle in. He started to think of what the future could hold for him and his new team; about what he would look like playing next to Mitchell or dribbling around a Rudy Gobert screen.
“I started to get really excited about the new opportunity and the great team I’ll be joining,” Conley said. “They are already so good, and to be added to that is something I’m really looking forward to. Trying to make those guys into the best players they can be and try to do something special.”
Special on the court — and special in the city, too.
"Already, the whole organization, the Utah Jazz, they do so much in the community that I will just fit right in," Conley said. "I want to fit in seamless and be that player that everybody is used to being around in the city."
